The One Who Waited novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: Snow in the Navy Yard

"We've never been on a date," Luke said.

It was the second week of December, and I was elbow deep in gingerbread for the Navy Yard's holiday market.

"We've been married six weeks."

"I know. I skipped a step. I'd like to go back and do it."

"What kind of date?"

"A real one. I pick you up. I pay. There's a moment where I worry you're bored."

"You live here. How do you pick me up?"

He thought about it.

"I'll go down the stairs and come back up."

That Thursday night he did exactly that.

He went down the steel stairs, waited a full minute, and knocked on our own door.

He was in a clean flannel and his good boots, with his beard trimmed and a bunch of grocery store tulips in one fist.

"Hi," Luke said. "Is Merry home?"

"Who's asking?"

"Her husband. I'm told she likes tulips."

I put them in a measuring pitcher because we didn't own a vase.

He took me ice skating.

The rink in Prospect Park was lit up white, with music playing.

The first real snow of the winter was coming down in fat slow flakes.

I hadn't skated since I was eleven.

Luke had never skated at all.

He told me this after we'd laced up.

"You're a wrestler. You have great balance."

"I had great balance on a mat. This is a knife on a mirror."

He was terrible.

He was so terrible that children passed him on purpose to look.

He held the rail with both hands and moved.

I laughed until I couldn't breathe, and then I fell.

He let go of the rail to grab me, and we both went down in a heap in the middle of the ice.

A little girl in a pink helmet skated a circle around us.

"You're doing it wrong," she told him.

"I'm aware," he said, flat on his back with snow landing on his face.

I lay on his chest on the ice and laughed into his coat.

Afterward we sat on a bench outside with hot chocolate in paper cups.

The snow was coming down harder. It stuck in his beard and in my hair.

He was quiet for a while.

Then he reached into the inside pocket of his coat and took out a small box.

It wasn't velvet.

It was old leather, rubbed pale at the corners, and there was sawdust in the hinge.

My heart went sideways.

"I'm not asking," he said quickly. "I want to be clear. This is not me asking."

"Okay."

"You asked me. Twice. Both times in a hospital. I said yes. That's how it went and I wouldn't change it."

He opened the box.

It was a ring.

A small old diamond sat low on a thin gold band, the kind of ring a woman could wear while kneading dough.

"I bought it on October second," he said. "The morning after I picked you up on Bank Street."

"A jeweler on Forty-Seventh Street. I've had it in my coat since."

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